To Love a Traitor
by Rusty Halos
Summary: Lily is the leader of the deadliest team of assassins ever created. They kill without leaving a trace, a shadowy force that fears no one and nothing. James is the captain of a team of Aurors intent on ridding the city of them. You can imagine the rest.


**To Love a Traitor**

By RH

* * *

**Warning**: Strong language. I mean it.

Summary: Lily Evans is the leader of one of the deadliest team of assassins ever created, a motley collection whispered about in fear in the darkest corners of town. They kill without leaving a trace, a shadowy force that fears no one and nothing. James Potter is the captain of a team of Aurors intent on ridding the city of them. You can imagine the rest.

* * *

Chapter One: A is for Agents

* * *

**April 16; 1200 hours; Headquarters of the Company.**

"E, do you read me?"

Lily Evans shifted a little inside her skintight black sneaksuit, and whispered back, "Confirmed."

She could smell the Combustion Powder in the air, a vaguely unpleasant scent of rust and burning. There was nothing to see in front of her except the long, dimly lit hallway, ending in a single safe, but she knew instinctively that there were, at the very least, six traps to kill her before she even got close enough to see the numbers on the safe.

"E, your objective is to reach that safe without triggering the alarms. When you get to that safe, you will check in."

"Confirmed, V."

"You have two minutes. Go."

Lily sprang into motion, sleek and silent, careful to make sure that her wand was safely tucked inside her belt. One stray spark would set the Combustion Powder off and make her a redheaded pile of ash. She neatly sidestepped the invisible spikes on every third floor tile, given away by their telltale shimmer, avoided the routine swinging of the axes extending from the walls, placed precisely at neck height, and then leaped over the low wall disguised with a Disillusionment Charm.

"_E_!"

Distracted by the panicked whisper in her ear—courtesy of the small Communicator there—her foot accidentally came down on a crack in the floor tile ahead of her.

Immediately, she swung her body low to avoid the furious _whiz_ of the axes as the swung toward her, then jumped to avoid them again as they disappeared and reappeared at around knee height.

"_Merlin_, V, what in the name of all that is—," she ducked low to avoid the automatic Stunners the walls were randomly emitting, "—magic are you fucking _doing_? I'm not _there_ yet!"

"Abort, E, abort!"

Lily heaved a sigh, but grudgingly grabbed her wand and cast a _Disguardio_.

The entire subterranean training area ground to a halt, and white lights lit up the shadows, where two other agents had been ready to spring out at Lily.

She greeted her teammates—her beta, Dorcas Meadows, and Amelia Bones—with a brief nod, which they returned. They were both garbed in black sneaksuits similar to Lily's, but they had not removed their masks yet, startling pieces of black silk emblazoned in emerald green along one cheek with the logo of the Company, an eerily beautiful fairy with blank eyes.

"V, come in, V," she said curtly into her Communicator.

"What the hell is going on?" asked Bones, annoyance written on every feature.

"Quiet, B," said Meadows, catching the look on Lily's face and admonishing the youngest, and most headstrong, member of their team.

"V, what's the meaning of this?" asked Lily.

After a brief crackle, Emmeline Vance's voice came online again. "E, you need to get back up here. Father wants to see you."

* * *

He was not, of course, their biological father, but every agent of the Company knew that he was their _real_ father. He had saved them all, every one of them, from a life of petty crimes and skulking around the streets of London, scraping out a living for themselves. He had reformed them into something stronger, something bigger, something better.

To Lily Evans, he was perhaps the only person that she had ever feared. Unlike the others, even those of her team, she had been barely a toddler when Father had rescued her from the remnants of the car crash that had killed her Muggle parents. He had somehow sensed her ability at magic, and had taken her into the fledgling Company, nurtured her and trained her until she was old enough to lead her own team. He had raised her to be fearless and strong, but even her gratitude and love for him, her desire to honor his faith in her, could not blind her to the steely glint in his dark eyes, which she had learned to respect, as the other agents had.

When Lily reached the training control room on the ground floor of Headquarters, V was waiting for her, a troubled look on her porcelain face.

"When did he call?" Lily asked.

"Two minutes, seventeen seconds."

"When does he want me?"

"Three minutes, forty three seconds."

Lily was very rarely surprised, but the shock that spread over her face now was genuine. There had only been four other times that Father had ever called her directly to him, after she'd been assigned her own team, and all four times he'd given her enough notice that she could change into the standard emerald robes of the Company, the required garb around Headquarters when not training or on a mission. One minute was hardly enough time to reach his office.

_Must be pretty damn important_.

She set off immediately, darting through the darkly elegant lobby, decorated in black marble with darting green messenger fairies flitting about. The eyes of the agents seated behind desks along the circular walls followed her movements, and she felt horribly conspicuous without the robes that they all wore.

The only way to get to Father's office was the Walkway, a magical belt of energy that flowed upwards, in a swirling ribbon of green, towards the very top floor. The black doors that guarded the Walkway slid apart for Lily, and she leaped onto one of the platforms scattered about the spacious square room, also richly paneled in black marble. A green ribbon swiftly reached towards her, and she stepped onto it, feeling herself whisked around and around as it carried her upwards.

When the Walkway finally stopped, Lily found herself on another platform. This one, however, was situated among its brothers in a room paneled entirely in glass, giving a spectacular view of the greenery of the surrounding countryside.

She stepped off the platform, and headed towards one of the doors, labeled only with a simple silver plate that read "F."

She pressed her palm to the plate, and it warmed up underneath it for a moment before cooling off again as the door swung inwards.

"Lily Evans," the door intoned in a deep bass.

She stepped inside the room, also paneled in glass, and faced the lone desk on the far side of the huge office. A man was seated at the desk, his back turned to her, facing the splendor of the countryside.

"Lily," he said, his voice velvety and deep. "Welcome."

"Father," she breathed. His office had always made her feel rather useless until she received an assignment, uncomfortable in the bare elegance and efficiency.

"Come forward, Lily."

She was walking the moment he finished the sentence, like she was a limb and he was the brain, seamlessly.

Lily stopped in front of his desk, and waited. After a moment, he turned around, and she saw that he was wearing the mask above his robes of dark green. She hadn't seen his uncovered face since she'd gotten her own team.

"I have an assignment for you, Lily, of the highest priority. It will be the most important thing you have ever done for me. Can you treat it as such?"

"Of course, Father."

* * *

**April 16; 1700 hours; Epsilon Team Dorm, Headquarters of the Company.**

Lily stretched, her tall, slim form bending and her joints popping as she felt her body relax.

Inside her spacious bedroom in her team's dorm, Dorcas Meadows was watching her.

"The highest priority," the blonde repeated thoughtfully. "This sounds fun."

The redhead shrugged. "I suppose so. It also sounds right bizarre, but Father says it's critical to the Company's survival."

Dorcas frowned. "Pretty fucking important, then."

Amelia Bones entered the room, her lean, tall body already dressed in her sneaksuit. "I'm glad we've finally gotten another priority job," she said. "I've been waiting for this."

Dorcas cast her cool glance over Amelia, who stiffened slightly at the scrutiny. "Are you ready, B? After the Sierra job?"

Before Amelia could retaliate, Lily had fixed her lieutenant with a cold glare. "Contain yourself, agent."

Dorcas' lips lifted a little, but she nodded. "My apologies, B. Perhaps we should give you point this time, then, after your break from it?"

Amelia, all insult forgotten, looked eagerly over in Lily's direction.

"E, could I?' she asked, a wheedling note in her voice.

Lily carefully pulled her sneaksuit over one leg as she shot a look in Dorcas' direction. They both knew that Amelia wasn't ready for point again, and she wasn't prepared to risk anything on this mission.

Dorcas only raised her eyebrows, and Lily knew that her lieutenant was basically saying, _You were the one who told her that the Sierra job was a one-time thing. You were the one who said that it would get better and better._

_Cow_, Lily thought uncharitably. She and Dorcas went way back, from before the formation of their team, and her lieutenant knew where to pick away at her, especially when Lily did things Dorcas disapproved of…such as sugarcoating for Amelia her responsibility for the near-disaster the Sierra job had been.

"I don't know, B," Lily responded carefully. "You haven't finished the training assigned to you after the Sierra job."

Amelia frowned. "Come _on_, E. You said yourself I would get better and better."

"Nonetheless, regulations say you've got to finish the training assigned after a debrief like the Sierra job required," Lily said, trying to sound as preachy as possible.

Dorcas, thankfully, held in any derisive comments about such a regulation existing.

Amelia heaved a dark sigh, but nodded with some grace to the other two before slipping away again to continue her preparations for the job that night.

"You just _had_ to push it, didn't you?" said Lily.

Dorcas shrugged. "You can't keep lying to the girl, E. We are the best. We can't keep taking hits like the Sierra job because she think she can still play point."

* * *

**April 16; 1800 hours; Auror Headquarters, the Ministry of Magic.**

James Potter stifled a yawn as he blearily silenced his irritatingly loud alarm clock.

"Bloody tosser," came a muffled voice from the other side of the dimly lit room. "Bloody fucking tosser."

"Shut _up_, Sirius," James whined as he dragged himself out of his four poster. Last night, the Marauders, a special division of the Auror Department of the Ministry of Magic, had successfully completed a raid on an outpost of the criminal organization known as the Company. They'd gleaned little from the tight-lipped agents there, but one of the Marauders, Remus Lupin, had managed to recover the pieces of parchment the agents had _Evanesco_'d before the Marauders' arrival. The parchment was still in the Evidence Department.

James' alarm was rigged to alert him when Alastor Moody, the head of the Auror Department, needed the Marauders. Moody was a paranoid, bad-tempered old man, but he was one of the best Aurors out there, and James had developed a bit of hero-worship for the grizzled Head. That was quite the only reason he'd pulled himself out of bed when the alarm had gone off—he and his team were still recovering from the fight the Company agents had put up.

Sirius Black, James' best friend and second-in-command, however, was less impressed with Moody, and much, much less inclined to get up after an exhausting mission to go to a meeting with him.

As James pulled on a relatively clean pair of trousers, Sirius opened one eye to peer at his messy-haired Captain, and stretched languidly on James' couch, where he'd spent the night, despite his room being just next door. He readjusted his clutch on his celebratory bottle of Firewhiskey, then cleared his throat meaningfully.

"What, Sirius?" James grumbled, haphazardly running a comb through his jet hair.

"You _aren't_ to go accepting another one, Potter."

James paused mid-comb, and peered unseeingly—his glasses were on the bedside table—at his best mate. "What are you on about?"

"Don't play innocent with me," Sirius said impatiently. "Don't you dare drag us on another mission while we're still in the twenty-four hour window of rest after last night. We haven't even done a proper celebration yet!"

"You've consumed Peter's entire stock of Firewhiskey," James replied, too amused to respond to Sirius' threatening tone.

"Like I said, we haven't done a proper celebration yet," Sirius said airily, and pushed himself up on one elbow. "If you let Moody give us another job, I'll tell ickle Marlenie-kins that you're getting ready to propose. Then you'll never have another moment of rest, much like me with your godawful scheduling of jobs."

"Oh, but I _am_ getting ready to propose."

There was a moment of silence.

"_Padfoot, you bloody wanker, get off of me!!!_"

"Are you _daft_, you arsehole?! Getting ready to _propose_?! You better be shitting me, you godforsaken pile of hippogriff droppings!!!"

"What's your _problem_, Padfoot?!" James shoved Sirius off of him, and fixed him with a glare.

"You're going to be Mr. Marlene McKinnon!!!" Sirius sputtered angrily. "You're _crazed_!!!"

The alarm rang again, even louder this time, impatient and unpleasant.

James grabbed his standard-issue coal-black robes and glared again at Sirius before slamming the door with an almighty _bang!_

_

* * *

_

**A/N**: So this started off as a kind of experiment while i **should** be working on _The Varying Degrees of Smackitude_. I'm basing this off a story I wrote for a different fandom under a different penname on this site (under the same title, if you wanted to look it up), and if it doesn't really go over well on HP, I'll delete it xD I'm not sure if this is suited to this fandom at all, but I wanted to give it a try, so let me know what you think!!! R&R

P.S. I don't think it's too difficult to guess if James is going to be assigned to a certain mission, where he might just bump into a certain redhead, who will be on a side that is definitely not his. Just an observation ;)


End file.
